I went through Cypress Creek in West Vancouver again, yesterday, with a couple of friends. Neither had done a canyon before - one had done a bit of top-roping and a few raps, the other less top-roping and less raps. :)

We had a great time, but one of the party had only a shorty wetsuit - she got pretty chilly, so we skipped the final rappel, and hiked out from the bridge.

The water was roaring pretty good, and was fairly cold. I was fine in 4/3 neo, but I run fairly warm, as far as I can tell. (There IS a benefit to the extra padding I carry everywhere!)

I had to rebuild two anchors - the chockstone on the first rappel had webbing around it, but the bottom of it had got wedged into small rocks and gravel below the chock, so there was no slack, and no ring/rapide. I tried to cut it away, but my knife was too dull, so I just put new webbing/rapide in place. We rapped the first two drops off that anchor, as there's very little anchor material in the pool in between. The pull is really quite easy, nonetheless.

The second rappel (commonly referred to as the third - we did the first two as a single two-stage rap) had the large boulder on the left (LDC) slung with blue webbing, but there was no ring or anything. Inspecting the webbing, I found the melted spot where the rope had been pulled directly through the webbing. It wasn't in *terrible* condition, but I cut it out and replaced it with new webbing and a rap ring.

So... questions: How many people are descending this canyon over the summer months? And who is putting in webbing without a ring/rapide? Is it a case of people figuring that the webbing isn't going to last long anyway, so why waste hardware on it? What's up?

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/cirrus2000/CypressCreekOct4201002

Kevin